German journalist fears return of conscription, mourns liberal democracy

Kevin Gensheimer, born in 1997, reflects on growing up in post-Cold War Germany with promises of a liberal democratic future. He now fears the return of mandatory military service (Wehrpflicht) for young men, seeing it as a betrayal of his generation's expectations. Gensheimer contrasts his idyllic childhood—marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall, Harald Schmidt on TV, and the 2006 World Cup 'summer fairy tale'—with the underlying issues of the era: the social cuts of Agenda 2010, austerity imposed on Greece, and a deteriorating German state with a dysfunctional railway and crumbling schools. He questions whether the liberal democracy he was raised to believe in was merely a fairy tale.